The SMART Act has some obvious shortcomings. For one, what is a social media company anyway? Does Spotify count? (It has a Facebook integration.) And what about dating apps, like Bumble or Tinder?

At a more basic level, Hawley’s bill seems aimed an essential truth of commerce: Marketing has always exploited human psychology. Drink this beer & you’ll be surrounded by friends and sunshine; eat this hamburger and you’ll look like a swimsuit model; drive this car and you’ll go on blissful camping adventures. But in Hawley’s view, social media companies have crossed some line, and no longer are just engineering mechanisms for effective advertising but are preying on the human proclivity to addiction.

Social media giants probably deserve a good bit of the criticism they receive, from the right and left. The influence Facebook and Google wield is undeniable, and we’d be naive to ignore it. Same goes for Twitter, Snapchat, and others. The algorithms matter.

But banning conveniences like YouTube’s autoplay or entertaining functions, like Snapstreaks, feels like overreach. If Congress wants to clamp down on social media for being too enthralling, perhaps it should also limit Netflix for being too binge-worthy.